


Humpty-Dumpty

by Salahra



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Arc Reactor Kink, Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Internal Monologue, M/M, Memories, Mild Language, Partial Nudity, Pre-Slash, Protective Hulk, Realization, no personal space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salahra/pseuds/Salahra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Observed Facts about Tony Stark (partial list):<br/>1) Tony Stark is never still.<br/>2) Tony Stark is rarely serious.<br/>3) Tony Stark has no sense of personal space.<br/>4) Tony Stark is a reckless idiot.</p><p>After Shawarma, a very tired (and concerned) Bruce Banner bunks with a very tired (and cuddly) Tony Stark, and Hulk informs him (in the only way he can) of just what he's missed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Humpty-Dumpty

**Author's Note:**

> As is the way with tags, spoiler warning for the ending of the Avengers.

Tony Stark never stops moving.  Bruce had noticed it from the moment they met, but his first night in Stark Tower was the clincher.  The man was never still, even while he slept.  Naturally, after long days on the helicarrier (or finding civilization again after falling off of it), and all that business with saving the world, they were both exhausted, and even though both men were ready to drop from the moment they had left the Shawarma restaurant, Tony had still taken the time to convince Bruce to crash at his place.  It didn't take much, tired as he was.  All of his arguments were a bit half-hearted, and Tony had answers to all of them.  There wasn't even anything to worry about if he _did_ hulk out (which he wouldn't, and Tony wouldn't mind if he did).  The place was even pre-broken.  See, no reason not to sleep over.  Besides, he was wearing Tony's clothes, and he _liked_ that shirt, so it was even completely selfish of him, and the shower two floors up still works, he thinks.

That was the end of it, at least until the morning, and this was more than enough time spent with Tony Stark to come to the conclusion that Tony is always, always moving.  Though, his movements that night were a bit careful and strained.  He favored one leg over the other, and was avoiding touching the back of his head or shoulders as much as he possibly could.   He wasn't saying anything about it.  Of course he wasn't.  Bruce noticed anyway.  Then again, it became impossible not to notice that there was something terribly wrong when, as Bruce stepped out of that definitely-working-though-the-water-heater's-evidently-not shower, Tony limped in (it would have been graceful and purposeful enough to say "danced in," if not for the limping), without knocking, as a very wet and very naked Bruce frantically grabbed for his borrowed towel.  

Tony awkwardly yanked his shirt over his head, ignoring the fact that Bruce was still very much in the room, and it took Bruce mere moments to forget his mild mortification in favor of intense, almost professional, concern.  Had Tony been moving like that before?  He supposed that he might not have noticed earlier, being newly de-Hulked and still a bit hazy.  Pretty much all he remembered from the events of the day was turning up to the burning ruins of Manhattan, midway through an alien invasion (and it should have shocked him, but it really, really didn’t), and setting the beast loose.  After that it was all a vague, staticky haze, remembered only in bursts of out-of-context emotion.  Well, that and a single coherent scene, once the fog had begun to recede, and he was himself again- the only other time he’d set foot in Stark Tower.  

He’d come to in what he supposed was a bedroom, to the sight of Tony Stark thrusting a set of clothes at him and babbling about Shawarma in ten minutes and damn it all Bruce was going to join them whether he wanted to or not.  He hadn’t noticed then if Tony had been limping, or in pain, but when he thought back to it, it wasn’t exactly clear, as they stumbled the few blocks to the restaurant together, just who was leaning on whom.  So, though it might not have occurred to him that anything was wrong then, it was certainly damned obvious now.

“Tony, what happened out there?”  The man’s newly bare torso was absolutely covered in scrapes and bruises, like some crazed tattooist had decided to decorate him with a loose interpretation of the Iron Man suit in lavender, grey and red.  
  
“You mean you don’t remember?” Their eyes met as Tony fixed Bruce with the most intent stare he could recall encountering.  Then again, he usually made an effort to avoid eye contact, not wanting to risk battling anyone else’s monkey-brain for dominance, for fear that the Other Guy would accept the challenge.   “Oh.  Of course you don’t.”  Tony sighed, and looked away.  Bruce was almost relieved that the intensity of Tony’s gaze had finally shifted from him, but was soon reminded that one should never overestimate Tony Stark’s respect for boundaries, as Tony limped the few steps to where he stood and grabbed his hand.  (This was interesting.  Different.  Distracting.  People didn’t- people don’t-  Look, don’t touch.  Hope they don’t look.  Never touch.)  “I don’t remember too much of it myself, but I could try to fill you in if you’d like.”    
  
Wait.  It took a moment for Bruce to process it, but Tony was actually being serious.  It was something about the gleam in his eyes, the set of his mouth.  Not still, but somehow steady.  Tony was never serious unless something important was at stake.  Something secret, personal.  Bruce knew that much already.  Something else he’d have to file away under “facts about Tony Stark,” along with perpetual motion, recklessness in the extreme, personal space issues, and sexual chemistry with anything from women to coniferous trees.  Forcibly returning his attention to the issue at hand (Hand.  Tony’s hand.  Tony was still holding his hand), Bruce finally managed to stammer out an affirmative.  “-but before you regale me with the epic tale of how you got them, let’s _do_ something about those bruises, hm?”

“Sure thing, Doctor Banner.”  
Was that a wink?  Leave it to Tony to flirt in his condition.

“First things first, Mister Stark.  Where do you keep the tylenol?”  
  
After digging through what passed for a medicine cabinet (evidently, Tony’d just dumped the whole “bathroom, misc.” box in there and Pepper hadn’t gotten to it yet) for a good five minutes, and sending his over-attentive and entirely unhelpful patient to the nearest couch for the duration of the search, Bruce emerged victorious, bottle of pills in hand.  He’d grabbed a splint and a wrap for Tony’s ankle as well, but the whining that had streamed from the other room at that suggestion (“...but then I won’t be able to _move_ the ankle, Bruce, and I can walk on it just fine, see?  ...as long as I, you know, don’t do _that_ , ever again.  ...ow.”) had convinced him to toss it back into the jumble, declaring it not worth the headache, and settle for asking JARVIS for some ice.  At least he could try to bring the swelling down a bit.  
  
There was a robotic whirring in the wall, and a panel that had, by all appearances, not been there a moment earlier, opened to reveal not the ice that Bruce had ordered, but a mysterious silver pouch, like an oversized moist-towelette packet, stuffed full of what, Bruce surmised from its weight and give, was probably cloth.  Probably some sort of very high-tech cloth, given whose wall had so helpfully provided it.  
“Tony!  What’s this thing?”  Bruce wandered from the bathroom and out to his charge, who was still on the couch, more or less where he’d been parked before deciding to test his ankle, but now also decidedly less upright, and, to Bruce’s dismay, sprawled out in such a way as to leave exactly no room for anyone else who might, perhaps, want to join him on said couch without using a mad genius as a cushion.

“Ah, JARVIS, you never cease to amaze me!” Tony shouted to the unimpressed ceiling, before shifting himself just enough that he could look at Bruce without yielding any portion of the couch to him.  “That, my dear doctor, is far, far better than ice.”

“You didn’t answer my question, and as you so helpfully pointed out just now, I’m your doctor, proper credentials or not, so details, my friend, details.”  Huh.  Friend.  Well, that slipped out of his mouth far more easily than he’d expected.  Then again, Tony’d touched him without a second thought, and now that he thought about it, neither one of them had a shirt on, and only Tony was wearing pants.  If they weren’t at least friends, what on Earth _could_ they be.

“It’s just a cloth with a bit of nanotech installed.  Made it myself, of course.  We tell JARVIS what we need, and it can heat, or cool, or even dispense antibiotics.  Just in case I ever decide to get myself beaten up by a bouncer, an angry ex, a disgruntled competitor, or a truck.”

Bruce smiled.  “So, Ice Pack 2.0?”

“Yep.”

“-and, I’m just _assuming_ , of course, that it was Pepper’s idea?”

Tony grinned back.  “Now whatever made you think _that_?”  
  
“Now that we’ve got that settled, how about wiping that smirk off your face and moving aside, so I can take a look at you.”  

“Why don’t you make me.”  His ludicrously smug grin remained firmly in place (and Bruce suspected that he was barely resisting sticking out his tongue), but Tony did shift slightly, leaving a tiny sliver of the couch for Bruce to perch on.  He rolled his eyes a little, in mock exasperation, and promptly did so, contorting himself somewhat uncomfortably to bring Tony’s bare torso into view.  
  
Oh.  
  
How could he have forgotten?  
  
He’d been so distracted by the ankle, and the bruises, the worry, and the banter, and the ridiculous, warm, unprecedented touching that he’d forgotten the most remarkable thing about the man he was currently sharing a couch with.  The glowing, blue, marvelous thing that he couldn’t believe he’d been ignoring until now, because was there anything in the world more beautiful than Tony Stark’s heart?  Beautiful, but, what was it Tony had said?  A terrible privilege.  He’d been so wrapped up in his own issues at the time that it had hardly sunk in, so distracted by the size of the man’s personality, especially tonight, that even with Tony parading it around in full view, Bruce had not fully comprehended what the reactor was.  A cluster of shrapnel.  It was a wonder that a man with such a gift for ostentation was also so damned good at making the really important things, horrible, life-altering things, seem... ordinary.  This was Tony’s lifeline, surrounded by old scars and the newly acquired bruises and abrasions that Bruce was so carefully cleaning with the now pleasantly cool cloth in his hand.  There were a lot of old scars.  Large ones, white and jagged cracks, right up to the edge of the smooth metal plate embedded in Tony’s chest.  Horrible.  Painful.  Fragile.  Beautiful.  If he wasn’t so good at control, he might have cried.  
  
“Hey, you still there?”  Tony squirmed under Bruce’s hands.  “You’re staring, and I think you’re forgetting to, you know, tend to my wounds here.  I guess I’m just that hypnotizing.”  His grin faltered a little.  “You okay?”  
  
“Yeah, fine, just... move over, Tony.  My back hurts, I’m tired, and I can hardly reach you, so stop trying to become one with the couch, you ass.”  
  
“Ooh, I like it.  Keep talking like that, and you’ll be filling a room in no time,“ Tony chuckled.  “Not literally, though.  Unless you want to.”  Sass or no sass, Tony Stark, the man who takes orders from no one, promptly extracted himself from the cushions with a pained squeak. Bruce had barely managed to assume a halfway-normal sitting position, however, before he suddenly found himself with a lapful of Tony Stark.  He couldn’t really bring himself to mind.  It was far easier to perform his doctorly duties this way, after all, and if the new position had the added bonus of a very, very warm billionaire falling rapidly asleep on top of him like an exhausted, hyperactive five year old, well, so much the better.  
  
As Bruce blearily gazed at the man in his arms, just beginning to snore, his left eyebrow and the corner of his mouth twitching erratically and hand grabbing absently at Bruce's towel (genius though the doctor was, the problem of getting proper night clothes on without waking Tony was a task far beyond his half-dozing mind), one simple thought continuously leapt, unbidden, to the forefront of his mind.  Tony babbled, fidgeted, fiddled and twitched.  This was his natural state.  Anything else was beyond wrong, like the laws of physics suddenly refusing to apply, and something in the depths of Bruce's psyche resonated violently with the thought, caught hold of it, and stuck a big wad of anguish to the end of the idea, as if with sticky tape.  The Hulk roared.  Bruce flinched.  And if the sound that escaped him at that moment was something less than human, like a gasp, or a cry, or an undignified sob, (or the howl of an animal that's lost its mate) at least there was no one in the room awake to hear it.  The emotions that he hadn't been around to feel hit him full on in the gut, and-  
  
Tony's face wasn't moving.  His hands weren't moving.  The battlefield around them was disturbingly still.  Thor and Captain Rogers were just staring, doing nothing.  Their lack of motion was the most unnatural of all.  The world was upside down, and Tony wasn't moving, and  No One.  Did.  Anything.  
  
It hurt, and it didn't stop hurting, and this was so much worse than the anger.  These weren't Bruce's own emotions amplified for him to _become_ the Hulk.  These were _it's_ emotions, _his_ emotions, and it hurt so much more because it wasn't just rage.  There was love there- raw and primal, but it was unmistakably love.  Bruce hadn't thought that his alter-ego (or alter-id?  Idem-id?  Geez, it'd been too long since he'd studied Latin) was capable of that.  He wasn't even sure that his usual self was capable of that much love anymore, but here he was feeling it, and it was as the Other Guy.  It was as the Other Guy, and directed toward Tony Stark, who was laying at his feet, while a super soldier and a god, perhaps two of the most powerful people in the world, did absolutely nothing about it but stare.  So the Hulk did something (and that something hadn't been to smash or destroy, Bruce noted).  The Hulk did something, and Tony moved.  
  
Bruce's memories rewound like an old, slightly garbled VHS tape, emotions that were only partly his own dragging them along, skipping between frames.  He was in elementary school again, preparing an intrepid space-egg for its descent back to earth.  That is to say, his class was having an egg drop competition.  He'd taken great care to ensure his charge's safety, encasing its fragile shell in layers of bubble wrap and packing peanuts, and attaching a magnificent, painstakingly tested parachute that was once a humble plastic bag.  The villain of the piece, however, had diabolical plans for our hero.  The teacher insisted that the contraption was too big, and, though Bruce did his best to save it ("He'll break, don't you understand?"), unceremoniously cut off the parachute.  Bruce had cried then, when he could still safely cry.  
  
Nine-point-eight-meters-per-second-per-second.  
  
Catch him.  
  
An egg dropped from a high place.  
  
Was the Metal Man broken?  
  
No defense but a shell of styrofoam.  
  
Catch him before he breaks.  
  
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.  
Humpty Dumpty had a great-"  
  
  
"Why would the king send horses to do a doctor's job?"  
  
Bruce awoke from his doze to find himself back on the couch, Tony groggily blinking up at him from his lap.  
  
"The king sent men too, Tony," Bruce murmured, not really caring if he was loud enough to be heard.  
  
"Horses don't even have opposable thumbs.  Saying that horses couldn't patch someone up is like saying a banana can't be an elevator operator.  It makes no sense."  
  
"…and Humpty Dumpty was an egg."  
  
Tony didn't respond, if he’d even heard at all, but rather shut his eyes again, curled onto his side, and shifted farther up Bruce's lap like a heat-seeking cat, nuzzling his head against his newly acquired pillow's chest and humming contentedly for effect.  
  
He still felt it, Bruce noted, with not-inconsiderable surprise.  That warm feeling wasn't just Tony’s body-heat, seeping through the still-damp towel to Bruce underneath.  Somehow, it was all connected now, the banter in the helicarrier lab, the promise of a friend, everything he’d feared the most going wrong, but still coming back for- what?  To save the world?  To put all of himself to use?  It all linked up with the feeling of not-his-but-still-his-memories, the haze of emotions thrust finally into context, that basic part of his brain that he worked so hard to close himself off from, that seemed to be rather pointedly trying to tell him something.  He'd gotten far too attached to this egg (not an intrepid space-egg this time- an obnoxious, twitchy, warm one, who never stopped moving, even if that ankle really should be splinted, and had a bad habit of jumping without a parachute).  Maybe, he mused, as he drifted off again himself, that wasn't such a bad thing.  

Tomorrow night, perhaps, they’d even make it to an actual bed.


End file.
